Michael Tsarion: How Children Can Save The World – Culture vs. Civilization

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Michael Tsarion: How Children Can Save The World – Culture vs. Civilization

Michael Tsarion has been quiet for the past decade but he’s back with this extremely interesting talk in his ‘Unslaved’ podcast.In this segment, he talks about the current crisis in cultural education how the nuances of the works of the great thinkers and artists in Western Culture, like Heidegger, Hegel, Freud, Jung, Goethe, Steiner, Montessori, Reggio, Cervantes, Rilke, Wordsworth, Blake, Caravaggio, Gibran, Beethoven, Mozart, Segovia, among others are being completely lost or grossly oversimplified – if represented, at all. He predicts that unless something is done, that within 5 years, these thinkers will cease to be cited in public school education, at all.Tsarion also makes an important distinction between “culture” and “civilization”, with the former relating to the works of great thinkers and the latter referring to the technology, the systems and institutions of our civilization. The esteem that we have for our civilization has eclipsed how we value our culture, which Tsarion thinks is completely reductionist, malignant and backwards.He says that a child is nothing “Without the legacy of those who’ve died and had his welfare at heart – and until a child is inspired by that legacy, you are not dealing with a whole human being, at all. You have to introduce him to the family of ideas; that’s what culture is. Civilization is just the accoutrements – the toaster, the heater…the engines…the technology can increase and increase, increase, while the culture shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. What we have in the West is a culture that has misunderstood this. They think the civilization is where it’s at…adding more shiny things isn’t helping us one damned bit…as we don’t teach our children correctly, that dynamic I’ve just explained is going to increase. So, in the end, we’ll have all the civilization and the accoutrements of – and no culture [transhumanism, anyone?]…never think that it’s going to be a desert and it’s going to be a wilderness. No.“In the place of something spiritual, if it’s not nurtured – wow, watch out, because it becomes demon-possessed. Take a look around and tell me I’m wrong.”